Elizabeth, 46 ans

This week, I'm celebrating the third anniversary of my "heart story", and it's a good time to talk about it because yes, really, it's quite a story! Everything changed for me at the age of 43, on June 2, 2019. That Sunday, I literally ended up out of breath in the emergency room of the Narbonne hospital, convinced that I was more down with spring allergies than usual. (Possibly also a victim of the denial in which I sometimes find myself when situations deteriorate too quickly).
I was taken care of quickly, and it was only after a few hours that they discovered the presence of a myxoma (judged to be of historic size) lodged in the left atrium of my heart. I was transferred to Montpellier University Hospital the very next day, and open-heart surgery was performed 24 hours later by the (magician) Professor Frapier. The operation turned out to be much longer and more tedious than expected, because once the tumour had been removed, the surgeon and his team tried everything to repair the damage left by the myxoma to the mitral valve... This is why I now live with a mechanical mitral valve and the constraints of anticoagulation treatment that this implies.
Even though myxomas are, I believe, quite difficult to detect, I realize afterwards that I must have ignored a few alerts and signals in the whirlwind of my life as a working woman and single mother of two boys. I certainly could have paid more attention to that "blocked plexus" feeling that I used to blame on anxiety and stress. And then, yes, of course, my eldest son was taking his baccalaureate that year, and the baccalaureate year (and Parcousup) is often dreadful for parents, but certainly not to the extent that I had to endure those hot spells when everything accelerates as I knew it... And above all, how could I have got used to my heart beating so fast, for so long?
Today, thanks to great teams of carers (the teams at Montpellier University Hospital, Professor Frapier, Doctor Prunel in Narbonne, Doctor Besse in Gruissan, the emergency doctors at Narbonne Hospital), with the love and patience of my family and friends, I'm doing well, and I'd like to say this: don't get used to your health deteriorating, the "while it lasts" philosophy applies to cars, but we're really better than that!

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